Coastal areas are naturally dynamic environments, an always changing interface between land and water. Shorelines along the coast and in estuaries erode and accrete over time – that’s what they do! What storms and waves take from one place they deposit someplace else. Tide goes in and out daily, and sea levels rise and fall over the years.

The purpose of the Florida Living Shorelines website is to make it easier for coastal property owners, public and private, to take a softer, more environmentally-friendly, and cost-effective approach to shoreline stabilization wherever needed and appropriate. This website shows how to use plants and other natural materials to help protect eroding shorelines from wave and storm damage in the bays and estuaries of coastal Florida.

Using native plants and oyster reefs on a sloped shoreline provides not only a beautiful natural shoreline system, but can also be a less expensive alternative to armoring your shoreline using traditional seawalls and bulkheads. As an added benefit, your shoreline contributes to making more fish to catch and wildlife to view, all in your backyard!

Photo by Florida DEP

Welcome

Our Florida bays and estuaries are important coastal ecosystems, and they do a lot of good things when allowed to function naturally. How we manage the connections between the waters of these systems and the land around them largely determines how well both function in concert together. As the tide rises and falls and the wind blows, shorelines are subjected to constant erosion and accretion – the sediments swept away from one place are deposited somewhere else. Coastal property owners have a menu of potential solutions available for solving erosion problems. This website provides information about “living shoreline” techniques, which integrate natural plant and animal communities into designs to control erosion for property owners and managers around coastal Florida. Have a look – it’s not just seawalls anymore!

Our Mission

The purpose of the Florida Living Shorelines website is to make it easier for coastal property owners, public and private, to take a softer, more environmentally-friendly, and cost-effective approach to shoreline stabilization wherever needed and appropriate.

We want to show you how to use plants and other natural materials to help protect eroding shorelines from wave and storm damage in the bays and estuaries of coastal Florida. The techniques described on this site, referred to as living shoreline treatments, can be used in relatively low wave energy areas instead of traditional coastal armoring systems such as seawalls and bulkheads. They can also help enhance natural habitat for fish, birds, and other wildlife – creating living, thriving shorelines instead of barriers to life!

We invite you to explore this site, and hope the information provided helps make it easy to take the softer approach.